A few days ago
marked

SAT question…identifying sentence errors..?

Lions and tigers may be identical in size, but the tiger is the fiercer animal and the lion the strongest.

the textbook says “the strongest” is the error..i dont get it

Ms.Jolie proudly demonstrated her company’s most popular product,a watch that flashes the time in lighted numerals when pressing a button.

here the error is “pressin a button”..help me out guys..i dun get it why..got SAT in a week!!!!

Top 2 Answers
A few days ago
walrus2.0

Favorite Answer

I have this same question as I have the same study book.

fierce and strong both have the same connoation, as well as close interchangability. This makes it impossible to say one is the strongest while the other the fiercest. *******************Either both end in est or both end in er. You must choose. So look at my example below.

Bob and Sam may be in the same math class, but Bob is the wisest person and Sam is the smartest.

Bob and Sam may be in the same math class, but Bob is wiser and Sam is smarter.

Which one is correct? The bottom one. Why? The word BUT shows contradictioary. but + and don’t mix with est. keep reading it and it’ll sound stupid.

that probably didn’t help. =\\\\ im a bad teacher. but the key is to read things academically, not with common knowledge. GL HF

0

A few days ago
SV
In the first sentence, the phrase should be ‘the stronger’ not ‘the strongest’. You are only comparing two things so you only need the comparative (…er) not the superlative (…est). Also, look earlier in the sentence: the tiger is described as “the fiercer”, not “the fiercest”.

In the second sentence, it appears that the watch presses the button, which clearly isn’t the case. In other words, because of the positioning of the phrase, the verb “pressing” seems to have the watch as its subject. Without changing the rest of the sentence, you could use the phrase “when a button is pressed” rather than “when pressing a button”.

0